Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

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.jp. That's y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

The whipworm is a parasite that infects half a billion people around the world. It lives in the gut,

burying its head in the large intestine, causing symptoms like nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.

But the worm's place of residence also reveals a potential weakness. The parasite needs to

steal some of our own gut bacteria to thrive. It takes them from the host and then bends it,

it seems, to generate a population which suits itself.

Richard Grentis is an immunoparasatologist at the University of Manchester in the UK.

So if they have bacteria, then they survive. If they don't have bacteria, they didn't survive.

Grentzis and his team studied that phenomenon in mice,

because yes, there's a type of whipworm adapted to them too.

And they found that when whipworms hatch, they acquire a fresh microbiome,

derived from the host's own microbiome, derived from the

host's own microbiome, but with different proportions of species.

Without that host's contribution, the worms die.

But the worms also induce changes in the host's microbiome, tweaking it so the gut is no longer

hospitable to hatching.

Now, you'd have to ask, well, that seems a little bit paradoxical because maybe the parasite

...